14 DAY TRIAL // For several years now, experts have been wondering about how religious people would react if they learned about the existence of life on other planets. According to scientists and theologians, this would not be enough to shake their faith.
Most likely, they say, religious people will begin to wonder whether Jesus Christ had incarnations on exoplanets and other worlds, or not. One would expect that discovering life elsewhere in the Universe would put an end to creation myths, but this is apparently not the case.
These were the conclusions of a meeting that took place in London, England, last year. Experts with the Royal Society met then to discuss the manner in which learning about extraterrestrial life would influence our society, and the view people within it have on things.
Full details of the panel's conclusions appeared recently in the January issue of the esteemed journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. An interesting note comes from a NASA expert, who says people's view on things might change depending on the type of life we found.
NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) astrobiologist Chris McKay said in the January 10th paper that society might change if we find alien intelligence, and not necessarily alien life.
“The discovery of life could very well or would probably be of microbes and could perhaps be on Mars or Europa, while the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence would almost certainly be from signals originating quite distant from us,” said the expert, who is based in Moffett Field, California.
“The detection of extraterrestrial intelligence […] would not only answer the question of whether extraterrestrial life existed, but also be such an amazing event that it would be very hard to try and predict all the impacts it would have on society,” he added.
But such a discovery would raise difficult questions for religion in general. According to Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary theologian Ted Peters, the main question might be whether a second genesis of life – such as that on an exoplanet – can be reconciled with a Biblical context.
Christianity's understanding of creation places us in the focus of the divine creation, and so including an alien civilization within the Biblical approach to explaining things might prove a bit difficult.
In a recent study on more than 1,300 people belonging to a variety of beliefs, it was demonstrated that the vast majority of respondents are confident they will not wither in their beliefs if they learn that extraterrestrial life actually exists.
Peters noted that an interesting consequence of such a discovery would be that theologians will have to convert to astrotheologians, Space reports.
“One of the things that distinguish one religious tradition from another are the symbols that have developed over time – Christians have their set, much as Hindus have theirs,” the expert explained.
“No doubt extraterrestrials have their sets of symbols as well, and theologians will have their work cut out analyzing them to see if there is any continuity of meaning,” he added.